Hi folks...
Well there is not long to wait now until another season gets underway in Australia and I am really excited ahead of the event in Melbourne.
There are so many changes. Lots of teams have lost personnel and gained others and different drivers have swapped around and so on. With the regulation changes it is looking like everything might be on more of an even keel too. We could have some exciting racing ahead of us.
Last year of course we started in Bahrain, but now its back to Oz - and Albert Park is always a great place to kick things off. It is a real fun place and the fans all have a real passion and enthusiasm for it.
In some ways though it was nice to have Bahrain on board in ’06 as the opener, because it fitted in a lot better for the European audience and the timing meant it was a lot easier to watch. With Australia everyone has to be up at 4 am in the morning - or something like that - and that’s not exactly sociable.
Last season it was all about
Renault versus
Ferrari, but I don’t think that will be the case in 2007.
It is going to be Ferrari again, but I think its McLaren that is going to be hard on the heels of the Scuderia, rather than the
regie.
You have to say there are another couple of teams out there as well that are showing some real progress -
BMW Sauber for one and they could make a bit of a dent into things, but the two contenders for the title, as we sit following winter testing, are Ferrari and
McLaren.
Indeed I think Ferrari start as outright favourites - and if you take on board the reliability side and the consistency, which has been very strong there over the last few years, it does look good for the Prancing Horse.
Yes, they have lost multiple world champion,
Michael Schumacher, but with
Kimi Raikkonen and
Felipe Massa they still have a good a very good driver line-up.
McLaren in contrast have been a little bit lacking in reliability in recent years, but what they have got is a new hunger. They have a different driver line-up and they have acquired a great asset in
Fernando Alonso.
